Strength and Constitution as separate stats in modern/sci-fi games?

[Shipyard Locked]

In my experience, a lot of games set in modern/sci-fi eras seem to do themselves a disservice by having Strength and Constitution be separate stats. What ends up happening is that the Dexterity stat is the clear best physical attribute, followed by Constitution, then distantly followed by Strength.

Dexterity routinely affects tons of crucial things: gun accuracy, initiative, reflexes, dodging, sneaking, acrobatics, driving, etc.
Con makes you durable, but is purely reactive.
Meanwhile Strength just isn't as relevant as the other two in a landscape of flying bullets and modern accessibility. Sure it can help you barge through doors or carry bodies quickly, but that almost feels like a skill, not an attribute.

I feel it's just better to combine Strength and Constitution into one stat, something like Brawn or Physique. The benefit of making one stat that can challenge the supremacy of Dexterity outweighs the drawback of being able to make minor distinctions between 'weak but tough' characters and vice versa.

Of course, I could be completely off base. What do you folks think?

 

[dbm]

I guess it depends on exactly what your players are going to be doing? Don’t underestimate the benefits of carrying stuff without being hampered. Even in a modern game carrying a long arm, side arm, ammo, body armour and still being able to keep mobile needs a physical robustness. Maybe a lot of ‘modern’ games ignore encumbrance too, and that reduces the need for strength?

And if your players are going to be more about melee (either armed or unarmed) then strength should be important for making those blows count. D&D-alikes may allow you to use Dex for To-Hit and Damage modifiers, but many other games split out accuracy and damage so having both dexterity and strength is important.

 

[Brock Savage]

In my experience, a lot of games set in modern/sci-fi eras seem to do themselves a disservice by having Strength and Constitution be separate stats. What ends up happening is that the Dexterity stat is the clear best physical attribute, followed by Constitution, then distantly followed by Strength.

I am greatly annoyed that Agility/Dexterity is the uber combat stat in many games. All else being equal, size and strength makes a BIG different in melee and thus we see professional fighting segregated by weight and gender. I am very interested in hearing some suggestions as at the time of writing it is probably my biggest gripe with 5e.

 

[Voros]

I get the idea in that strength and stamina can be distinct, in boxing for instance bulking up is a mistake as it reduces one's stamina and speed which are much more important than brute strength in the sport but that may be too finely grained a distinction for most games which are not really about unarmed combat.

So for instance such a distinction would make more sense in a martial arts game.

 

[Brock Savage]

I get the idea in that strength and stamina can be distinct, in boxing for instance bulking up is a mistake as it reduces one's stamina and speed which are much more important than brute strength in the sport but that may be too finely grained a distinction for most games which are not really about unarmed combat.

So for instance such a distinction would make more sense in a martial arts game.

Among the ranks of professional athletes these fine distinctions makes sense but when a system represents physical prowess ranging on a scale from sick old man to Olympic-class and beyond, a much broader brush is required.

 

[AsenRG]

I get the idea in that strength and stamina can be distinct, in boxing for instance bulking up is a mistake as it reduces one's stamina and speed which are much more important than brute strength in the sport but that may be too finely grained a distinction for most games which are not really about unarmed combat.

So for instance such a distinction would make more sense in a martial arts game.

So, in all games, basically?

 

[Voros]

So, in all games, basically?

I'd say there is a difference between a game with unarmed combat as a distant option (e.g. D&D) and a game that focuses on it. Only a game based on classic kung fu, wuxia and HK action films as a genre probably meet that requirement, as far as I know there are few games based on wrestling or boxing.

 

[Gringnr]

To me it's less about the stat itself and more about the system's design. I don't like stats that are rarely- or under- utilized.

 

[Brock Savage]

I'd say there is a difference between a game with unarmed combat as a distant option (e.g. D&D) and a game that focuses on it. Only a game based on classic kung fu, wuxia and HK action films as a genre probably meet that requirement, as far as I know there are few games based on wrestling or boxing.

I think I get you. Basically a martial arts focused game where all combatants who aren't mooks are assumed to be in peak condition with optimal strength for their size.

 

[Voros]

I think I get you. Basically a martial arts focused game where all combatants who aren't mooks are assumed to be in peak condition with optimal strength for their size.

I could see Constituion as a sperate stat in a game based on that genre but at the same time as you mention in the genre the hero tends to be able to fight almost tirelessly.

 

[Edgewise]

My go-to attribute breakdown these days combines Strength and the damage resistance of Constitution as Toughness, and the stamina part of Constitution with the agility portion of Dexterity for Athletics. For modern games, hand-eye coordination is important enough to warrant its own attribute, which I call Accuracy. That's used for aiming guns, driving vehicles, picking locks/pockets, etc.

The reason this makes more sense with higher tech is because all of that hand-eye stuff is about manipulating devices. Technology is all about replacing or leveraging the physical exertion of its users.

 

[EmperorNorton]

It's honestly why I like games that separate accuracy with ranged weapons out into something else, like Silhouette does with Perception being the ranged accuracy stat.

 

[Tom B]

I haven't seen any issues. Unless you're someone who fights, Strength isn't all that important. Being able to survive damage is still important, though, and a lot of things require Dexterity. So, it seems to shape up in a way that makes sense. Maybe I'm not understanding the problem?

 

[TristramEvans]

honestly, outside of superheroes,, I see no good reason Strength and Constitution should ever be seperate. It's not like a person can get stronger without getting tougher and in better shape, short of stuff like superstrength or natural body armour.

 

[Brock Savage]

TLDR combine Strength and Constitution, call it Vigor.

 

[TristramEvans]

TLDR combine Strength and Constitution, call it Vigor.

 

[Trippy]

Thing is, when I wrote my dissertation on the human proprioceptive system back whenever that was, the medical research I cited stated that muscular strength was one of the main contributors to patients recovering their co-ordination balance after suffering debilitating accidents, and that in sports such as acrobatics it was also muscular strength that was the main contributing factor.

So, in that aspect, Dexterity is actually a component of Strength too.

 

[Trippy]

honestly, outside of superheroes,, I see no good reason Strength and Constitution should ever be seperate. It's not like a person can get stronger without getting tougher and in better shape, short of stuff like superstrength or natural body armour.

Increased muscle mass and applicable force doesn’t mean somebody has a better underlying health or stamina though?

 

[dbm]

honestly, outside of superheroes,, I see no good reason Strength and Constitution should ever be seperate. It's not like a person can get stronger without getting tougher and in better shape

Plenty of power, not much endurance...



Lots of endurance, not a huge amount of power...



I agree a game or genre might not care a huge amount, but the differences are very real and lacking them would hamper verisimilitude from my personal perspective.

 

[TristramEvans]

Plenty of power, not much endurance...

View attachment 18395

Lots of endurance, not a huge amount of power...

View attachment 18396

If we're talking about stamina, sure. But do you think the one's on the bottom are tougher (to quote myself), harder to injure than the one on the top?

Honestly I think the distinction there isn't strength and endurance...it's size.

 

[TJS]

I think a lot of modern games don't really need a stat for Strength at all.

Sometimes it's enough to know if a character is really strong or not. In that case it could be just covered by some kind of merit or perk.

 

[dbm]

If we're talking about stamina, sure. But do you think the one's on the bottom are tougher (to quote myself), harder to injure than the one on the top?

I guess the thing here is that people see these stats meaning slightly different things and they can have a significant effect on how you envisage a character. For me, the minimum is to be able to differentiate power, endurance and control which map quite well to the three classic D&D physical stats.

Honestly I think the distinction there isn't strength and endurance...it's size.

Careful, or we’ll all end up playing BRP

I think a lot of modern games don't really need a stat for Strength at all.

Sometimes it's enough to know if a character is really strong or not. In that case it could be just covered by some kind of merit or perk.

I quite like how Fate tends to handle this. Strength of some kind is a ‘skill’ in Fate and if you are noteworthy at employing your Strength then you buy it for your character. If you character isn’t, then you don’t.

 

[PolarBlues]

Obviously it all depends on the context and how the rest of the game design work, but generally I agree. Iconic as it is, Strength doesn't tend to do much in modern games. If I am moving house, I don't rate my friends my strength before I decide who to ask for help. Unless exceptionally good or bad, most adults can do what most adults can do.

I definitely this with Cyberblues City. I went through a pile of character sheets from playtests and pulled off the numbers, the attribute for Strength was clear a dump stat, Didn't matter for that game because the characters are by default hypercompetent anyway. However when I started work on Lawmen v Outlaws I knew I would have to do something about this.

As I was looking for a pretty low crunch, broad strokes sort of system, the general idea was to roll all a person physical aptitude related traits into on, something like Fitness or Athleticism. But I have a problem in that I'd already set on the idea of naming all Traits as short, snappy verbs, like "Think", "Fight" or "Fix", framing them in terms of "these are the things you do". Best I could come up with is "Move" which I don't love, but design is all about compromises.

 

[Nobby-W]

In my experience, a lot of games set in modern/sci-fi eras seem to do themselves a disservice by having Strength and Constitution be separate stats. What ends up happening is that the Dexterity stat is the clear best physical attribute, followed by Constitution, then distantly followed by Strength.

Dexterity routinely affects tons of crucial things: gun accuracy, initiative, reflexes, dodging, sneaking, acrobatics, driving, etc.
Con makes you durable, but is purely reactive.
Meanwhile Strength just isn't as relevant as the other two in a landscape of flying bullets and modern accessibility. Sure it can help you barge through doors or carry bodies quickly, but that almost feels like a skill, not an attribute.

I feel it's just better to combine Strength and Constitution into one stat, something like Brawn or Physique. The benefit of making one stat that can challenge the supremacy of Dexterity outweighs the drawback of being able to make minor distinctions between 'weak but tough' characters and vice versa.

Of course, I could be completely off base. What do you folks think?

I don't see any reason why not. In a trad fantasy game like D&D Strength can add to melee combat and Constitution can add to hit points and/or other functions of toughness. In a game where combat primarily involves firearms strength is no longer so important and DEX becomes a bit of a god stat if allowed to. For that type of setting it's quite reasonable to merge strength and constitution into some sort of physique stat.

If you get reductive while still wanting stats in your system then you could go down to four or five stats. Note that in FATE there are no stats, although there are skills that do something equivalent to physique and willpower:

• Physique covers items that would be STR or CON.
• Dexterity covers shooting, fiddling with things and suchlike. You could make feats of physical agility a function of both STR and DEX if you felt so inclined.
• Intelligence covers perception, skills requiring technical nouse and similar activities.
• Willpower could be a separate stat if feats of endurance (martial arts) or resistance (magic or psionics) were a significant part of the game, otherwise fold it into intelligence or physique.
• Charisma or Empathy becomes the stat that drives crap artistry skills.

Whatever you want to call them, that covers pretty much all the bases W.R.T. common use cases in a moderns or sci-fi system. You could fiddle with the boundaries a bit - is mechanical repair DEX or INT based, for example?.

 

[Trippy]

If we're talking about stamina, sure. But do you think the one's on the bottom are tougher (to quote myself), harder to injure than the one on the top?

Honestly I think the distinction there isn't strength and endurance...it's size.

Well, yes, it seems that you are describing some debate that was had in the design process of BRP, or GURPS when it switched to its 4E.

However, for me, Strength and Endurance/Stamina are distinct enough - but I also like to use Strength as a gauge of toughness (as in physical resistance to damage) too, while Endurance combines health and well-being with mental willpower. It’s how I interpret their use in Traveller.

 

[dbm]

Well, yes, it seems that you are describing some debate that was had in the design process of BRP, or GURPS when it switched to its 4E.

However, for me, Strength and Endurance/Stamina are distinct enough - but I also like to use Strength as a gauge of toughness (as in physical resistance to damage) too, while Endurance combines health and well-being with mental willpower. It’s how I interpret their use in Traveller.

That is a very GURPS interpretation, now that you highlight it. In GURPS, ST is normally achieved by having a big muscle mass and this in turn is how HP are envisaged in GURPS. So in GURPS, your HP are equal to your ST stat by default. HT in GURPS is more about endurance (it governs Fatigue...) and resisting things like disease or poison.

In GURPS, pretty much all physically attacks are dependent on DX to land your blow, and then (for muscle powered weapons, including bows or thrown items) ST is the basis for your damage. Technological weapons do reduce the benefits of ST somewhat, but it’s still generating your hit points for you.

And in GURPS DX costs twice the amount of XP to increase as ST, though there is still debate that DX is underpriced for what you get.

 

[AsenRG]

I'd say there is a difference between a game with unarmed combat as a distant option (e.g. D&D) and a game that focuses on it. Only a game based on classic kung fu, wuxia and HK action films as a genre probably meet that requirement, as far as I know there are few games based on wrestling or boxing.

Yeah, man, I just mean that every time I start playing in a game, it somehow morphs into a martial arts game!

 

[robertsconley]

Of course, I could be completely off base. What do you folks think?

I think physical prowess doesn't go hand and hand with endurance, hence need for two stats. I think that way because I played sports a lot when I was younger and there was always a distinction between training that build endurance and training that built strength. I knew plenty of strong folks that wouldn't be able to run a 400m or 1000m race. And I knew plenty of folks that could do those long distance races easily but couldn't lift half of what the stronger guys could do. Likewise on a more nuanced point there were folks that could sprint a 100m like a demon but still couldn't do a 400m as well as the other person.

And yes strength in industrialized and technology societies is a marginalized attribute because one of the first things industrial technology tackled was the amount of work that could be done. Which in the past was largely based on strength. However marginalized doesn't mean useless.

It is a natural consequence of the premise of the setting. Just like if you happened to run a campaign where everybody ran a mage, intelligence suddenly becomes THE stat to takes to the point that nearly all players put their highest stat into intelligence. Which is fine because it is part of the point of that campaign.

 

[robertsconley]

As far as GURPS goes I think 4e did the right thing with basing Hit Points on Strength, and Fatigue on Health. Traditionally in GURPS, Hit points was mostly based on a Creature's mass. Also larger creature tend to be stronger as well. However there not as clear cut relationship between size and how healthy a creature is or how much endurance it has. However it does make sense as less healthy individuals seem to get winded sooner.

And it is more elegant from a system standpoint as mages would work on being healthier to have more fatigue then working being stronger as it was in 3e.

 

[dbm]

And it is more elegant from a system standpoint as mages would work on being healthier to have more fatigue then working being stronger as it was in 3e.

I guess we know which edition this guy was made in...

 

[AsenRG]

I guess we know which edition this guy was made in...

View attachment 18403

Tunnels & Troll(op)s?

 

[Panzerkraken]

Tunnels & Troll(op)s?

No, clearly he's from Palladium, you need the high PE for your base PPE.

 

[dbm]

Tunnels & Troll(op)s?

 

[Gringnr]

Strength doesn't mean the same thing in every system.

As far as GURPS goes I think 4e did the right thing with basing Hit Points on Strength, and Fatigue on Health. Traditionally in GURPS, Hit points was mostly based on a Creature's mass. Also larger creature tend to be stronger as well. However there not as clear cut relationship between size and how healthy a creature is or how much endurance it has. However it does make sense as less healthy individuals seem to get winded sooner.

And it is more elegant from a system standpoint as mages would work on being healthier to have more fatigue then working being stronger as it was in 3e.

In most editions of T&T, CON is HP and STR is (sometimes) an abstract measure of fatigue. Spellcasting causes fatigue, hence the T&T "meat wizard".

But then, T&T was designed to avoid redundancies and make sure every stat does something.

 

[Gabriel]

No, clearly he's from Palladium,

::thinks::

Yeah. That checks out.

 

[Stan]

While I can see how strength does not automatically give disease resistance, poison, resistance, etc. I'm all for combining str and con. I like players knowing their abilities without constant character sheet reference - it makes for a smoother flowing game. 3-4 stats is enough so that half a dozen characters each have their own space. Yes, that means you are going to lose some distinctions such as fine motor vs gross motor control. But abilities aren't the sole thing most characters are made of so there's still ways to add finer distinctions.

Plus, back to the op's point, the more stats you have, the more likely that some are more valuable than others - if several stats are dump stats then you effectively have fewer stats and fewer options than it initially seems.

 

[AsenRG]

Guys, it's all a matter of taste. Yes, it's more realistic to have STRENGTH and ENDURANCE separately. But how much impact would this have in a system where you don't have a separate SIZE stat? How about the difference between static and explosive strength?


If you feel Str is underpowered compared to Dex, consider instead splitting Reflexes, Agility, Coordination and Dexterity. Or at least some of the above. This should help making the stats equal.
Also, a separate Fighting stat or three (as in Maelstrom) helps avoid a lot of these arguments.

 

[EmperorNorton]

I always liked the M&M3e split up. Agility and Dexterity being two stats, Fighting being it's own stat (I think it's also an interesting idea to make Fighting a mental stat rather than a physical stat)

 

[AsenRG]

I always liked the M&M3e split up. Agility and Dexterity being two stats, Fighting being it's own stat (I think it's both an interesting idea to make Fighting a mental stat rather than a physical stat)

Yep, much better for modern games. But then M&M is pretty much an outright improvement on its predecessor and shows what D&D could have been if it wasn't bogged down by an excessive numbers of holy cows!

 

[EmperorNorton]

It is my favorite form of D20 for a reason.